[Story and photo by Mike Foley, originally published online in the BYU-Hawaii Newsroom, March 14, 2006]

One of Hawaii’s leading corporate attorneys shared some of the learnings and business philosophies he has incorporated into his own and other ventures in the March 14 entrepreneurship lecture series.

Gregory R. Kim, Esq. [pictured at right] worked at top at legal firms in San Francisco and Honolulu for 20 years until 2004, when he and a partner founded Vantage Counsel LLC — a local law firm specializing in corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions and high technology contracting. He told BYU-Hawaii students “entrepreneurship makes business and the world better.”

[Story and photo by Mike Foley, originally published online in the BYU-Hawaii Newsroom, April 20, 2006]

Elder Yoshihiko Kikuchi [pictured at right], a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy since 1977, shared words of encouragement and a powerful testimony during special meetings on April 20 with Korean and Japanese students at BYU-Hawaii.

Elder Kikuchi, the first native-born Japanese to be called as a General Authority, and his wife, Sister Toshiko Kikuchi, stopped over for the meetings in Laie en route to an assignment in the Kona Hawaii Stake conference. He is currently serving in Salt Lake City, Utah, on the Church temple and curriculum committees, but previously was a member of the Asia North Area presidency that includes Japan and the Korean peninsula, president of the Tokyo Temple, and president of the Hawaii Honolulu Mission.

Speaking to the two groups in turn, and addressing his fellow countrymen and several returned missionaries in Japanese, Elder Kikuchi told of his love for the people of Korea and Japan, and showed an Asia North Area slide presentation on the growth of the Church in those countries.

[Story and photos by Mike Foley, originally published online in the BYU-Hawaii Newsroom, October 7, 2004. Kester has since finished his PhD and the Oxford University Press will soon publish his dissertation as a book.]

Matthew Kester [pictured at right], who graduated from BYU-Hawaii in 1999 and is a Ph.D. candidate in Pacific history at the University of California-Santa Barbara, recently joined the University staff as the assistant archivist. It is planned Kester will replace University Archivist, Dr. Greg Gubler, when he retires at the end of this school year.

Kester explained he moved to Hawaii as a youth to surf, graduated from Kahuku High and went on to BYU-Hawaii. Along the way he developed a deep interest Pacific history, and followed former professor Paul Spickard to UCSB.

“My dissertation is on the Hawaiian colony at Iosepa in Utah. It’s a history and also a look at the way Iosepa has been remembered in the community, especially in the Laie community,” he said.

[Story and photo by Mike Foley, originally published online in the BYU-Hawaii Newsroom, March 27, 2007]

Dr. Kent M. Keith [pictured at left], who in 1968 wrote a series of “paradoxical commandments” as a teenage undergraduate at Harvard that have since spread across the globe and formed the basis for several current best-selling books, urged BYU-Hawaii students in the Honors forum on March 27 to follow a service model of leadership to find more personal meaning in life.

Keith — who grew up in Honolulu, became a Rhodes Scholar and more recently served as president of Chaminade University of Honolulu (a Catholic school; he’s a Protestant) — told the students, “I’m here to encourage you, because I think as you look out into the world now-days it’s easy to be discouraged. There are good things going on everywhere, but it’s so hard sometimes when you think of war, starvation, disease, genocide, the threat of nuclear destruction… There’s a lot of suffering going on. There’s no end of natural disasters.”

[Story and photo by Mike Foley, originally published online in the BYU-Hawaii Newsroom, November 2, 2004. Note: Aunty Genoa passed away February 25, 2008]

The “Hawaiian Lady of Song,” 86-year-old “Aunty” Genoa Keawe, continues to promote her successful recording business by performing regularly in Waikiki and in special appearances around the world.

Keawe’s son and business agent, Eric Keawe — a BYU-Hawaii alumnus, partially used television interview clips by TV personality Emme Tomimbang to tell his mother’s story in the November 2 Entrepreneurship Lecture Series.

That story started when Genoa Adolpho moved to Laie when she was six years old and eventually started singing in church choirs. “In Laie we used to have a lot of concerts, and I used to love to go,” Keawe reminisced, adding that sometimes her mother would even have to “pull her ear and drag her out.”

[Story and photos by Mike Foley, originally published in the BYU-Hawaii online Newsroom, April 12, 2007]

Two members of the BYUH Hawaiian Studies program will report on their participation as crew members during the recent open-ocean journey of two voyaging canoes from Hawaii to Satawal in Micronesia to honor the man responsible for restoring traditional non-instrument ocean navigation to Hawaiians over the past 30-plus years.

Kamoa’e Walk (right), Assistant Director of the Jonathan Napela Center for Hawaiian Language and Cultural Studies at BYU-Hawaii, and Kawika Eskaran, Special Projects Coordinator, will speak of their experiences at a 10 a.m. forum on April 12 in the Cannon Activities Center. Both are key crewmembers of BYU-Hawaii’s own 57-foot wa’a kaulua or traditional twin-hulled Hawaiian sailing canoe, the Iosepa.

During a special November 7 program featuring a Hawaiian community choir, missionaries and a family of donors, the Brigham Young University Hawaii Archives placed a rare 1855 edition of Ka Buke a Moramona — the Hawaiian Book of Mormon — on permanent display in the Laie Hawaii Temple Visitors Center.

The new display culminated four years of efforts by BYU-Hawaii 7th Ward Bishop Dean Clark Ellis to have the book take a prominent place among the other 80-plus translations of the Book of Mormon at the Visitors Center. Ellis is the grandson of the late Elder N. Ford Clark, originally of Farmington, Utah, who received it in 1920 as a parting gift at the end of his first mission in Hawaii. When Clark died in 1978, members of his family donated his Ka Buke a Moramona to BYU-Hawaii.

[Story by Mike Foley: Originally published in the online BYU-Hawaii Newsroom, January 21, 2008]

One of the foremost international experts on Pluvialis fulva — the Pacific Golden-Plover — has spent the past two weeks at BYU-Hawaii helping faculty and students, as well as state and federal researchers, net and band specimens of the unique long-distance migratory shorebird known as kolea in Hawaiian.

“We are trying to band a number of birds on campus…to give experience and insight to some of the students who have come out. They’ve enjoyed seeing the techniques of actually capturing some of these birds and learning more about them,” said Dr. Oscar “Wally” Johnson [pictured at left], a retired professor of biology and ecology at Montana State University in Bozeman who is still active in research.

[Story and photos by Mike Foley: Published originally in the BYU-Hawaii online “Newsroom,” January 20, 2003]

A talent search crew for Jeopardy, the Emmy Award-winning TV quiz show, came to the Polynesian Cultural Center’s Pacific Theater on Friday, January 17th, to select three BYU-Hawaii faculty members and a Kahuku High teacher as possible adult contestants during a morning audition, and five BYU-Hawaii students during a noontime tryout.

From the two auditions, Jeopardy contestant coordinators selected Honors Program Director and English professor Randall Allred (on the left in the picture), music professor David Kammerer (on the right), history professor James Tueller (in the middle), and Kahuku High testing coordinator Joseph Holzman as possible candidates for the daytime show; and BYU-Hawaii students Ryan Alexander (a recent graduate), Daniel Chase, Mitchell Colver, Stefanie Johannessen and Luke Mease as possible contestants on the $50,000 College Championship show.

[Story and photo by Mike Foley: Published originally in the BYU-Hawaii online “Newsroom,” April 4, 2007]

A counter-terrorism expert now on the BYU-Hawaii faculty suggested to Honors students in their April 4 colloquium that humanitarian aid — helping people — will ultimately be more effective than military intervention in fighting terrorism.

“Terrorism isn’t something new. Terrorism has been around for millennia…and it’s going to continue to be with us until the Lord returns,” said Dr. Brian Houghton, who teaches in the new public management minor program.

[Story and photo by Mike Foley: Published originally in the BYU-Hawaii online “Newsroom,” April 11, 2005

In February 2004 when Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of The Quorum of the Twelve served in residence as President of the Chile Area, he became the first LDS Apostle to visit Easter Island — or Rapa Nui as its approximately 2,500 Polynesian inhabitants call their isolated homeland, which has had a small branch of members since 1981 and is currently part of the Chile Santiago North Mission.

While on Easter Island, Elder Holland invited Alberto Hotus [pictured at right], 75, president of the hereditary council of elders and a former mayor of Rapa Nui, to visit BYU-Hawaii and the Polynesian Cultural Center.
Easter Island, considered one of the most remote spots in the world, is located about halfway between Chile and Tahiti and is world-famous for its large stone statues or moai. It has been a part of Chile since 1888.

[Story and photo by Mike Foley: Published originally in the BYU-Hawaii online “Newsroom,” October 8, 2004]

A delegation of 10 faculty and staff from the China Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of World Religions in Beijing spent October 7-8, 2004, at BYU-Hawaii where they toured the campus, experienced the Polynesian Cultural Center, and held a roundtable discussion with faculty members.

The group stopped over on their way home from BYU in Provo where they participated in an academic exchange and attended the J. Reuben Clark Law School’s 11th annual international symposium on law and religion.

[Story and photos by Mike Foley: Originally published in KALEO, January 29, 1998]

Pro-Bowl quarterback Steve Young [pictured at right] of the San Francisco 49ers took time out from preparations for the game to travel from Honolulu to Laie on Jan. 31 where he addressed a gathering of Latter-day Saints youth.

The event, “Especially for Youth,” (EFY) was attended by approximately 1,600 young members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The youth, ages 12–18, were in Laie from all over the state for the day-long conference, which is held yearly on the BYU-Hawaii Campus and is sponsored by the school’s Division of Continuing Education.

[Story and photos by Mike Foley: Published originally in the BYU-Hawaii online “Newsroom,” March 5, 2009]

Brigham Young University Hawaii Honors students learned in their colloquium on March 4 about a unique program in nearby Kahuku — one of only 40 in the world — fully accredited to train highly skilled service dogs to help disabled people, and how they differ from other assistance, therapeutic and “seeing eye” guide dogs as well as other service animals.

Susan Luehrs [pictured at right], Executive Director of Hawaii Fi-Do, which is based in the makai parking lot of Kahuku Medical Center, was a special education teacher at Kahuku High when she first got involved with training the unique dogs in 1999 as a way to help her students. She brought Ehu [pictured below: the name refers to its hair color], a year-old Labradoodle that is part of the program, who lay quietly near Luehrs for most of the presentation. Labradoodles are an evolving hybrid originally cross-bred in Australia between Labrador Retrievers and Poodles for their temperament and low-shedding hypoallergenic fur.

[Story and photo by Mike Foley: Published originally in the BYU-Hawaii online “Newsroom,” January 20, 2004]

Humanitarian marketing: selling desperately neededproducts for people who can’t afford to buy them

The co-founder and partner in a unique water pasteurization equipment company with widespread potential in developing countries faces the challenge of trying to market a desperately needed product to people who can’t afford to buy it.

Will Hartzwell [pictured at right], president of the Honolulu-based Safe Water Systems, told BYU-Hawaii business students in the Jan. 20 Entrepreneurship Lecture Series that he and his partner formed their company about nine years ago with the “very powerful humanitarian mission…to significantly improve the health quality of life worldwide” through clean water.

“Our philosophy is the more we make, the more we can help people…and benefit the entire world,” he said.

Here are a couple of samples:

I first became aware of cockroaches when I was in elementary school in Salt Lake City, Utah, and we learned to do the Mexican hat dance to the music of La Cucaracha for a May Day program. Since then, and even though I now know they are found in many places throughout the world, I […]

Hukilau Marketplace part of effort to upgrade facility By Mike Foley For the Church News of September 6, 2015 LAIE, HAWAII President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, second counselor in the First Presidency, dedicated a major new addition to the Church-affiliated Polynesian Cultural Center here on Aug. 29, after which he dedicated the new Courtyard by […]

During my six-month East-West Center fellowship Pacific Islands field study in 1971 (which I’ve previously mentioned a couple of times), my wife and I arrived in Sydney, Australia, late one July night: It was freezing cold (especially for Hawaii people), and I remember there was ice in the gutters. In those days many places in […]

[Story and photo by Mike Foley: Published originally in the BYU-Hawaii online “Newsroom,” February 18, 2003] The CEO of Hawaii’s largest plate lunch restaurant chain says decentralization and giving management part-ownership are keys to L&L Drive Inn’s success. Eddie Flores [pictured at right], a Chinese-Filipino who immigrated with his parents to Hawaii in 1963, told […]

Subscribe to Mike Foley's Blog via Email

Please enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.